A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains or may contain material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the photocopy reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure in exactly the form it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The present invention relates in general to a gaming device, and more particularly to a gaming device having an improved offer and acceptance bonus scheme.
Gaming devices, such as slot machines, having primary and secondary or bonus games or schemes are well known. One well known bonus game provides a player with a series of award offers consisting of credits or dollars. The player may either accept each award offer or reject each award offer; however, the player must accept the final award offer. If the player accepts an award offer, the player keeps the award offered. If the player rejects the award offer, the gaming device provides another award offer to the player except if the award offer is the final award offer. The award offers are randomly determined from a series of award offers of differing values. As illustrated in FIG. 3, the potential award offers 52 are displayed to the player, each award offer made by the game is displayed in an offer display 54, the number of offers remaining are displayed in an offer remaining display 56, and accept and reject buttons 58 and 60, respectively, enable the user to accept or reject the offers.
Several different embodiments of this type of bonus scheme for a gaming device have been implemented in gaming machines of various types. While this type of gaming device has achieved significant popularity in the gaming industry, after playing the game repeatedly, players may lose interest in the game. Accordingly, there is a need for new gaming devices related to this type of offer and acceptance bonus scheme.
The present invention provides a gaming device having an improved offer and acceptance bonus scheme. In one embodiment of the improved offer and acceptance bonus scheme of the present invention, the gaming device provides the player an opportunity to determine the number of offers the player may obtain during the bonus round. In particular, this embodiment provides the player with a plurality of masked selections or symbols. The player selects one of the symbols and the gaming device reveals the number of offers associated with the selected symbol. The player obtains the revealed number of offers for use in the offer and acceptance bonus scheme as described above. The gaming device also reveals the number of offers associated with the non-selected symbols. One preferred embodiment includes three symbols and a different number of offers (i.e., three, four and five) associated with the symbols. It should be appreciated that the number of offers associated with each symbol may be randomly determined. The specific number of offers associated with each symbol is randomly determined for each round of the bonus scheme.
In an alternative embodiment of the improved offer and acceptance bonus scheme of the present invention, after the gaming device selects (and displays) one of the possible award offers to the player (such as the one hundred offer 52a illustrated in FIG. 3), the gaming device prevents that offer from being made to the player again. In other words, the gaming device removes, eliminates or nullifies a previously offered award from the random determination subsequently made for additional award offers.
It should be appreciated that both of the embodiments of the improved acceptance and offer bonus scheme of the present invention can be simultaneously implemented in a single bonus round or each implemented individually in different bonus rounds. The determination of when to implement such alternative embodiments could also be randomly determined.
It is therefore an object of the present of the present invention to provide a gaming device having an improved offer and acceptance bonus scheme.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed disclosure, taken in conjunction with the accompanying sheets of drawings, wherein like numerals refer to like parts, elements, components, steps and processes.